The Polish Prince abdicated. Mike Foltynewicz no longer claims royal blood. As the son of Foltyn, the name translate to “son of he whose arrows never hit target.”

Baseball sometimes features the unprecedented. Also, it sometimes features the “this has probably happened, but it sure doesn’t come around often.” The first inning was more in the second vein. There was a runner on second and 2 outs. Then later, the bases were loaded, one run was in, and Folty still had the no hitter going. How can such happen, the ignorant masses might say. 3 walks loaded them and a hit by pitch scored one. As Hoyt would say “Not too good.” Then, a double made it 3 to 0 going to the bottom half of the inning.

In the third, Ozzie Albies walked. (I know you who didn’t see that are going “no way” but it is right there in the box score and play by play). Then Freddie Freeman cut it to a one run trail by not failing to launch.

Then, more runs by the Sanctimonius Fowl. In the 4th, one on a solo home run. In the 5th, 2 on a 2 run home run. But, bottom of 6, Tyler Flowers hits a magic sac fly that scores 2 and it is 6 to 4. Then in the 7th Nick Markakis doubled with 2 outs and Wash and Freddie couldn’t get Freddie home and Johan Camargo stranded Freddie and Neck. That was as good as it got on this night.

The Sanctimonious Fowl then got 3 more in the eight off of Rocky Jesse Biddle and then 2 more in the 9th off of Arodys Vizcaino (see, he may not quite be ready to go).

The Cheese Steaks dropped another one, so the Journey through the back door continued to progress.

Do you think that Snitker is the A. short term answer B. long term answer or C. no answer at all as manager of the Braves?

My take, he’s perfectly cromulent, but neither great nor terrible. I do think he is bad at managing a bullpen, and there are no doubt other managers that would manage it better. However, they may lack the positive attributes in team morale, etc. that he apparently provides.

IF the Braves somehow blow this lead, having said all of that, I’d fire him as soon as the last out is recorded.

But see, not necessarily. We can be mired in a funk of the funkiest proportions, come out of it, get hot, and run through the playoffs like we’re the dadgum San Francisco Giants or Florida Marlins. And that’s baseball.

Last 3 games, starters have gone 11 IP, 13 ER, 12 BB. That’s obviously not going to continue, and we just had 3 bad starts. The bullpen is troubling, and the added concern that the bullpen is full of gassed rookies compounds it. But this is a slump, and that’s probably the worst you can say. It’s not indicative of the team’s overall talent level. It’s not like it’s FSU football or something.

And to piggyback on Stu and Rob’s points, this team is 6-4 over the last 10 games and it’s in a slump.

But, you know, it’s been this way with this group of fans all season. Braves can’t lose a few games without the same tired topics being dug up (“Fire Snit?”, “Blowing the lead?”, “Embarrassed in the playoffs”).

seemingly unique about this Braves team is their refusal to let a first inning like this turn into a farce. They just seem to battle from behind unlike any team I have known. I was genuinely surprised when freddie K’d with the bases loaded. Whatever comes, this team is worth watching till the last out is recorded. that is nice to see.

@14 LOL, yep. I don’t get what’s wrong with just enjoying this team and celebrating the accomplishments along the way. Maybe… they will surprise in the playoffs. Maybe, they will play a very admirable playoff series (or two) and tip their cap to a better team (at the time).

But if they lose in the opening round, we already know the posts that will be blasted on here. “Should’ve just folded in September and saved us all the embarrassment.” “I’d have rather had another year’s worth of high draft picks versus this farce of a winning season in the weakest division in baseball!”

The thing that Brian Snitker is better at than just about anyone other than Bobby Cox is getting his guys to shake off a loss, trot out the old cliches and mean them.

Obviously, Bobby had trouble winning a single must-win game, and we’ll see if Snit has a knack for winning in October. But I think we can trust that he’ll keep his boys from getting too high or too low, and we can clearly see that they adore playing for him.

Pretty much all we need to do to win the World Series is for Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies to eat their Wheaties, and literally everything that happens from this point on is found money.

I know I have no issues with where we are right now. I definitely understand that there’s an element of streakiness with the team recently, and if you’re swayed by such things, it can put you on some high highs and low lows. Going back to the end of August, we lost 3 straight, won 2, lost 3, won 5, and now lost 3 with only two games of non-streakiness within all of that. But that’s why you have to look at the longer stretch: 9-7 in September, 6-4 in the last 10, etc.

As for Chief, I really appreciated his post regarding Snitker. Like, in spite of the bullpen management, that post said a lot about Snitker’s strengths. It’s a valid question and statement to say that if the Braves somehow didn’t win the division, it would be hard to move forward with the same leadership in the dugout.

2011 was an embarrassment. Having watched this team all season, I doubt we will be embarrassed by the showing in the playoffs. Disappointed, perhaps but not embarrassed. Even in a rough loss last night, the team showed a lot of fight.

To add some more perspective, our magic number is the lowest in the NL including the WC. We are still in line to be the first team to clinch a playoff berth. I’d still like the number to be 4 or less when the Phils come to town so we can split and clinch at home.

I am always very disappointed by our losses especially the ones where I think we have not played up to our potential. I never think “doom”. And the things I post about are never generic “we’re terrible”, “we’re going to be embarrassed”, etc… but more of why can’t we fix things that seem fixable (like throwing strikes). This team is really good and has the potential even how it’s currently constructed to be as good as any team in the league. They just need to dig deep and do what we all know they are capable of.

And then, I’m ready to build an affordable super team over the winter.

@26 I’m with you regarding playing up to the potential and especially the walks. It has been a head scratcher. Even guys who had great command and superb K/bb ratios in the minors seem to come up and become nibblers at the strike zone. I actually believe Flowers works a better game with any of our pitchers over Suzuki, and the Braves should prioritize getting the best out of our pitchers over any available bat at the position.

Alex’s successful YouTube embed was made possible without solicitation by David Appelman — yes, THE David Appelman, the creator of FanGraphs — because I broke our site today and he helped me get my act together. He’s not the hero we deserve, but he’s the hero we need.

Also, nowhere in my post did I say “Fire Snitker”. In fact, I gave three choices and asked to discuss them. I don’t think it unreasonable that if you blow a 7-8 game lead with 2-3 weeks left that you should be fired. In fact if that did happen, I’d expect and hope that they would clean house.

I said once the Braves have a habit of winning games and then instantly turning around and losing a bunch to throw all their previous progress away, and somebody said “they haven’t been a streaky team.”

I don’t know, maybe, but it sure feels like they had a lot of stretches like this. Win five games, then follow it up by instantly losing five.

I know Hicks can’t be a comfortable at-bat for anyone, but I think he could have thrown 100 pitches to Albies and Ozzie still would not have put the bat on one of them. That was one of the most hopeless non-pitcher ABs I have ever seen.

But this is Atlanta. 28-3. An 8.5-game lead to start September. Forgive those of us supporters who are biting their fingernails right now, call us crazy and nonsensical, but we’ve touched the piece of cheese that has given us the electric shock before.

I have the feeling that our batting order has had more of an impact than it should. We went into the tank as soon as Camargo pulled up lame. We haven’t been the same with Ozzie batting 2nd. Even Ozzie was hitting better down at 6th or 7th.

On the bright side, at least we’re not D-back fans. Wow have they ever spit the bit these last few weeks. Sure wouldn’t mind taking Patrick Corbin off their hands though, isn’t he a free agent after this year?

If you let Teheran eat innings the first few months and stick with the plan to provide an extra day of rest whenever possible, you're less likely to end up in a position where you may need to limit the younger arms down the stretch